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AII-1002-68093
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NetEase apologizes for AI-generated Valentine's promo featuring underage character

NetEase Super Member used an AI-generated promotional campaign featuring an underage character from the game Yangyun Shiliusheng for Valentine's Day marketing, prompting complaints from players. The company issued an apology on February 17 and committed to strengthening content review processes.

13 February 2025 Β· NetEase Β· Harmful and abusive content
13 February 2025
AII-1002-68093
Quick facts
Category
Harmful and abusive content
Country
China
Date
13 February 2025
Drafted by
Raidu Incident Detection

What happened

On February 13, 2025, NetEase Super Member sent a Valentine's Day promotional push featuring the underage female character 'Red Line' from the game Yangyun Shiliusheng as a promotional element.

The promotional content was generated by AI and contained errors related to the character's game persona. The content was not reviewed by the Yangyun Shiliusheng project team before publication.

Reported impact

Game players expressed strong dissatisfaction with the use of an underage character for Valentine's Day promotion when many adult characters were available. Players called for NetEase to apologize to the character and her fans.

Index analysis

NetEase Super Member acknowledged insufficient understanding of the game's world-building and character designs, which led to incorrect use of the NPC character for the promotional campaign. The AI-generated content had no connection to the actual game content.

Governance controls

On February 17, 2025, NetEase Super Member published an apology statement, removing the article immediately upon discovery of the problem.

NetEase Super Member committed to strengthening communication with the Yangyun Shiliusheng team and enhancing content review processes to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Classification

Category
Harmful and abusive content
Industry
Media, social platforms and marketing
Country
China
Harm status
Potential harm
Intent
Unintentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm types
Psychological, Reputational
Harmed
Consumers
Failure modes
Hallucination, Content moderation failure
Consequences
Content removal, Public apology
AI systems
NetEase AI content generation system

Sources and evidence

Sources not yet published

This record was researched and written by the Index from original reporting. Its sources are still being verified by an editor, and they are listed here once that check is complete. Until then the record carries no reviewer.

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